In Name Only
by kali-g
Summary: Trying to understand the motives of both and where to go from here. A slow realisation. Set after TFA, spoilers. Assumes no relation- Kylo Ren/Rey
1. Chapter 1

**Hey- anyone willing to beta?**

She had been on board for eight days. She counted the days, monitoring the frequency of meals passed through a tiny hole in the heavy door of her cell. She had used the handle of the fork given to her with the first dinner to scratch each day into the wall next to the door, as she had counted the days on Jakku.

On the sixth day she sat cross legged on the floor, head and clothes still bloody from the fight she had put up when first captured. The door suddenly opened.

She was not surprised. She had felt him coming; a darkness on the edge of her consciousness that distracted, making it hard to meditate as Master Luke had instructed.

He stepped into her small cell, and she refused to give him the satisfaction of standing, of reacting or fighting, of betraying any emotion. She opened her eyes, looked up at him disinterestedly, and raised an eyebrow. Seeing the mask, she faced down again, and closed her eyes again in pretence of perfect peace.

He looked at her, and, seeing no reaction, turned to leave, indicating to the storm troopers as he left. They picked her up by her elbows, and carried her struggling form to a shower block further down the hall.

He had gone, she was glad to see. He didn't see the storm troopers, females, thankfully, force her dirty and bloody clothes from body, push her under the warm spray, and monitor as she cleaned her weary body with the provisions provided. She moved out of the spray after a number of minutes, and found a pile of towelling and clean clothes on a bench. Grateful but wary, she dressed, only to be marched back to her cell.

The next day, this repeated, though this time a woman- not a storm trooper, though dressed in heavy black clothes and a black hood, cut her nails, washed her hair and braided it down her back.

Back in her cell, Rey wondered what she was being prepared for.

He is silent.

She doesn't expect much from him; certainly not conversation, but some acknowledgment of their changed status or some insult… Instead the silence is welcome.

She had followed him after the ceremony, two armed storm troopers escorting them to a level on the ship higher than she had ever been.

He is silent and she is grateful. She hesitates, entering the large, furnished room behind his confident stride. She takes in the low, dark bed against one corner and the large window facing out onto the galaxy across an entire wall. She takes in her new husband, his back to her against the far table, removing his mask then resting, hunched, over the table. He doesn't turn to look at her.

Hesitant and unsure of what is expected of her, unsure of anything right now - the last two hours had been so surprising. She stared at his hunched form before moving slowly and hesitantly to a chair in front of the window.

Feeling rather than seeing him move behind her, she waited, tense. Each step he took she could feel. She was so aware of him; had been since that night in the snow.

Feeling him stop a metre or so behind her, she turned. He was staring out the window, his face emotionless and dark eyes trained on some distant point.

Wishing for anything to cut the tension, she opened her mouth. She managed only a croaky "Why…?"

His eyes snapped to hers, making eye contact for the first time since their battle. The scar cut his face in two, deep and puckered pink skin across a pale visage. His eyes, she felt, stole the breath from her body when they locked on hers.

Swallowing deeply, his voice was deeper than she remembered.

"This is to maintain your honor. The simplest way of ensuring you are treated with integrity as you ought to be is for you to be under my protection."

Rey was bewildered. "As your wife?"

He nodded slowly. "As a prisoner you would have been public property." Seeing the revulsion on her face as the implications of his words hit her, he continued. "You will not be expected… That is to say, you need not worry…"

Turning abruptly, he walked to a room attached to the far side of the main room and returned a few minutes later, lowering himself into the bed and turning from her.

Rey hardly noticed his return. She sat seemingly transfixed and stared out to the galaxy beyond, her thoughts swirling with the sheer complexity and confusion of her situation and how it had changed in the last few days. To his implication of how it could be infinitely worse as prisoner if he had not intervened. Of his seeming promise that it was a marriage in name only.

Of how she had gone from free woman of the Resistance, to prisoner, to wife of Kylo Ren.


	2. Chapter 2

They don't touch, at first.

He stays to his side of the bed, she to hers.

During the day, he is gone for long periods of time. She is not permitted to be out of the quarters without him, and he is not inclined to take her wandering past the hostile eyes of other members of the First Order.

They share evening meals in silence and she remains in the quarters alone while he is gone. He feels her boredom and frustration.

He comes back one evening a month into their marriage to find her asleep, slumped across the table with a lamp in 20 pieces on the table in front of her, a crude improvised screw driver fashioned from the eating utensils she had found.

The next morning, she wonders how she woke up in bed when she'd fallen asleep at the table.

After Kylo leaves that morning, the door to his quarters open to reveal two Stormtroopers. They enter, dragging behind them a covered trolley. They leave without speaking to her, and she approaches the trolley cautiously. She removes the cover to find a small reconnaissance flight drone, poorly kept with the entire right flank in pieces. A small box contains tools.

Rey looks back to the door that the Stormtroopers had left through. Hesitant, but desperate for something to do other than sit with her own thoughts in silence, she goes to work, first discovering what is broken then repairing the drone. When Ren returns to quarters that evening, he is greeted with a smile and the excited, lit eyes of his wife.

"Thank you," she says hurriedly, moving towards him. "Thank you so much. It was you, wasn't it?"

Surprised by the excited emotion in her voice, he stares at her through the mask without moving. Seeing his lack of response, she shrugs, and happily goes back to soldering.

She rarely spoke to him, either afraid of him or unwilling to give too much when he gave nothing away. He was so used to hiding in her presence; controlling and hiding every emotion, no matter how powerful, that he could not turn the response back on so easily.

Sensing that he had not responded appropriately, he completed his nightly ablutions then joined her in bed. He could feel the happiness radiating from her; he knew she was not one to remain idle and the past month had been difficult for her to cope with. He had known that when he had ordered the drone to their quarters that morning.

It had not been easy for him, either.

He was hiding everything. He wanted her in a way he had never wanted anything before in his life. He was consumed by a constant ache below his chest. He felt her at his very centre.

He wanted her, in every way. He had never felt a connection this strong and, if he were honest with himself, was terrified of what it meant. He wanted to touch her, wanted to speak to her, wanted to share with her and have her share with him. He wanted to know what she was thinking and feel her share the Force with him. He wanted to share all with her- his belief that they were connected in some visceral way and that they had a great destiny to fulfil in the future.

He could not, though.

She was light and she hope and she was everything he had fought against for the last five years. She was what he had hated in his father and the weakness he fought to control every day. He needed to remain distant and controlled, or risk losing all that he had worked towards. Snoke had agreed to their marriage on the basis that a new generation would soon spring forth. The weight of his worries about the future, of how to reconcile or even accept these feelings and their dissonance from his goals…

He sighed. He was tired. Total control, fighting against what every part of him wanted and hiding the truth from Snoke was exhausting. He wondered what kind of damage it could really do to show, just a little, how he felt about her. A month of perfect control. He deserved a moment, a second of reward.

Touched both by a desire to show acceptance of her thanks and tired frustration with the distance he had kept between them for so long, after he had lay down in bed, he turned to her side and, slowly, hesitantly, rested his hand on her shoulder. He could feel she was still awake, could feel that she was surprised.

Unwilling to admit his fear of her rejection, he started to remove his hand and berate himself for his weakness.

Then, a sudden shift in her. A moment of understanding. He could feel her acceptance, her longing for some contact with someone, anyone, even him, if it just meant that she wasn't so isolated for a few moments.

She moved her small hand over his, and they fell asleep hands entwined.


End file.
